Allison+Partners Marks One Year in Chicago – On a Napkin

Allison+Partners (www.allisonpr.com) was founded 11 years ago on a cocktail napkin. And, yes, cocktails were involved. Like so many tech start-ups, Allison+Partners began as an idea – a vision – on how it should be rather than how it was. Just two public relations pros working for big holding company agencies getting together to commiserate about the state of the industry, and in the end, creating something pretty powerful.

I love that story. It’s one of the reasons I joined this firm – to continue the vision, however blurred at the time, of our founding partners – Scott Allison and Andy Hardy-Brown.

And this particular vision centers on doing good work for our clients. In fact, that’s our motto: “It’s About the Work.” It’s not about making huge margins to keep Wall Street happy; it’s about the work we do to make our clients successful – technology clients throughout the years, such as YouTube, Gowalla, and Dropbox. You see, we believe that if you work hard, invest in good people and do your job, profit will follow. And of course, we must all reserve time for napkin nights of our own. Because we must never be satisfied with the status quo.

So here we are – approaching the one-year anniversary of Allison+Partners Chicago office. It’s been a tremendous year. We’ve brought the insights and support of our teams from San Francisco to Seattle to New York to London and delivered top-notch service for clients from TechWeek to Orbitz to Clearstream to Viewpoints. We’re getting involved in the community by supporting Redmoon Theater and donating time to Rebuilding Together.

We are growing and we are thankful. And although Greg Dunn, my co-managing director, and I both have spent our entire careers in Chicago, on behalf of Allison+Partners, we thank the Chicago tech community for welcoming us and helping to make our first year in Chicago About the Work.

Now, we’re going out to celebrate. Who has the pen and napkin, and whose turn is it to buy?